I'm not actually in Rio, was only there for a couple weeks. There are plenty of favela tours that are offered and locals are the tour guides. I would recommend trying to find one of those tours and then you can ask your local guide more about what you want to know.

Hi there. My name is Michael. I am coming to Rio in a month for a school trip and would love to have someone who knows their way around to talk with. I find your stories extremely interesting. I am currently studying favelas in Rio and would appreciate some information. Would you be willing to give this to me? My email address is macerna3@yahoo.com

Did you consider trying to hook into the clone (http://community.aegirproject.org/node/24) feature in Aegir to create new sites from a "template" site. I am considering this route to avoid all the install profile nightmare. Just curious on your thoughts of that after this experience.

I thought Aerolineas Argentina serves perfect service but it's kind of scary to sit in old planes since we never know what technical problems it may come up with. I have benefited a lot from this article since I was not too knowledgeable about Aerolineas Argentina.

Totally agree - Aerolineas Argentina is terrible. What a disgrace they are to Argentina. Their planes are old, safety is not a priority, and they are notorious for losing luggage. Their staff are rude and customer service is a foreign concept to them. Dealt with a joker in Ushuaia who said he'd help us, then he disappeared for over 1/2 an hour and never did return--probably went home! Phoned the airline to complain about the treatment we received and the woman hung up the phone! We will never fly with them again. LAN is far superior.

Hey Adelle! At this point we aren't sharing the install profile anywhere for a few reasons. One of the biggest is simply a lack of time to put it together into an organized fashion. Getting the product working well with all of the most important features has taken the most time. Fortunately we're able to give back a lot to the community in terms of patches and new contrib modules at the same time.

The install profile by itself wouldn't actually be useful to anyone. It's tightly coupled with aegir and a few custom pages there as well as some custom features.

At some point I would like to get a simplified wedful style install profile that I can give back to the community, probably bundled with a couple of features. We're a long way from that right now though unfortunately, but since one of the goals of the project is to have as little custom code as possible, this would be a step in the right direction.

Good post about values, Scott. I get past the dilemma of giving money and what it may be used for, by sharing food I have or by buying the panhandler some, instead. Often if I'm munching on a bag of chips or a snack, I'll offer to share it with a homeless person, before they even ask for anything. So far, everyone has genuinely appreciated it and hasn't in turn asked for money.
Your sentiments about trust also applies to trusting people on any level, especially emotionally in any way kind of relationship, whether with strangers or partners.

My first "DrupalCon" experience was in Vancouver 2006 at the Open Source CMS Summit. It was magical. It was inspiring. I got up at the end and jumped up and down in front of everyone to talk about all the great things I wanted to do for the community. That conference had a total of about 200 people, with at least 1/4 of them from other projects.

In truth, the two "main" conferences are a whole new animal. It's not just the size, but also the content. In the early days you had much less people presenting finished work (or instructing newcomers) and a lot more of people talking about what they were thinking about doing for Core, etc.

The good news is that the original feeling of the camp is alive and well at a number of Drupal Camps around the country. They're regional, so they don't necessarily draw all the traditional "Drupal Rockstars," but my experience going around to different camps last year was really amazingly positive.

Also, for anyone who misses the "let's get together and work on Drupal" perspective, you should definitely attend the Core Developer Summit before each of the conferences. That was honestly my favorite thing about SF, and my biggest regret of CPH was missing it there.

I do think there's room for a "national" or even "international" Drupal Camp, but don't wait on the Association to organize it! ;)

IIRC the closing session has generally been a clap-fest for the people who made the conference happen. Recognition is given to all the volunteers, and also to the sponsors. I thought it was actually nice to have someone who was an experienced public speaker MC the whole thing, and I thought the talk-show format was meant in jest/humor.

What I tried at track chair for the coders track in CPH was to press speakers hard to abide by the track description. We moved sessions where coding was not the primary focus to other tracks. Many sessions which were submitted in coding were vague and needed discussion with the submitter. Some turned out to be actual site building sessions with one or two slides of explaining the glue code they written. Well, that is not for the coder track. I think/hope we did a good job in identifying and moving sessions as needed.

This does not cover all the use cases obviously. Every track will have beginner and advanced sessions alike and identifying those properly in advance would indeed be useful.

We've seen the same issue as well with not really knowing the level or intended audience of a session going in. As a presenter I see it from the other side as well. :-) It's a problem we do want to try and address better for Chicago but haven't decided yet how that will work. Suggestions welcome!